Hulu removes a Golden Girls episode featuring blackface

[TMC]

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/gol...ed-1234692451/

The 1988 Season 3 episode "Mixed Blessings" features Betty White's Rose and Rue McClanahan's Blanche testing out a new mud face treatment, saying: “This is mud on our faces, we’re not really Black.” Hulu's removal comes one day after it removed a Community episode featuring Ken Jeong in blackface hours after Netflix pulled the same episode.

[bandonurse]

Oh, brother!

As supportive as I am of the current anti-racism movement, some things should really be taken in context, don't you think?

In fact, not only did Blanche and Rose merely have mud packs on their faces, they showed concern that they might offend their black visitors and explained that they were not trying to look like black people. Quite the opposite of wearing blackface, if you ask me.

But you do you, Hulu.

[TMC]

Removing blackface episodes doesn't confront racism, says a scholar on racial caricature

"Every year, when I teach undergraduates about minstrelsy and blackface, I look around for a recent example -- and I have never failed to find one," says Rebecca Wanzo, a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. "Fashion companies place grotesque images on clothes or bags. A white Australian performer like Iggy Azalea skips the black makeup but makes money by taking on an African American persona in her music. Anime clearly has a blackface problem. But I have never used any examples from 30 Rock, Community, The Office, Scrubs or The Golden Girls, which had episodes pulled or scenes edited out from various streaming platforms because they were deemed 'blackface episodes.' A number of these episodes, albeit to varied effects, comment on racism. Protests that have sprung from George Floyd's killing and other recent cases of police brutality have had widespread effects, including new examinations of the politics of racial representation. Given the ways in which caricatures of Black people are often used to justify such violence, interrogating Black representation in popular culture is a natural outgrowth of the movement. But as a scholar who works on racial caricature, I can't help but feel that pulling these episodes demonstrates a mere surface engagement with this history, and an inability to recognize precisely what makes racist representations injurious. t is easier to pull these episodes than to do the hard work of thinking through the embedded nature of black caricature and racism in popular culture, not just in the United States but around the world." Wanzo adds: "One thing is clear: If we removed every trace of racism from the pop culture canon, we would be left with quite the fragmented legacy of works. When I teach about the history of popular culture in the United States, I emphasize that African Americans -- and racist caricature -- are not peripheral to its development. They are at the very center of it."

ALSO:

• Hulu widely panned over removal of Golden Girls "blackface" episode featuring mud masks: "That Golden Girls episode isn’t blackface. What the hell ?," tweeted author Roxanne Gay. "Removing this episode is weird, counterproductive and stupid. It diminishes the effort to actually end racism. It’s just so dumb." Podcast host Erica Williams Simon added: "First of all, they were in mud masks not blackface. And second of all, in what world does 'Stop killing us.' sound like 'Please remove episodes of Golden Girls'? I didn't see that ask on anyone's protest sign... " Writer Ira Madison III suggested that whoever removed the episode "either didn’t even watch it or is just not a smart person."
• Taking down blackface episodes and recasting Black cartoon roles voiced by white actors seem like empty gestures: "Unless these steps are followed by other, longer-term actions that address the systemic racism in Hollywood, they’re purely cosmetic changes that let these shows’ creators and stars off the hook," says Marina Fang. "They get to evade a real conversation about racism, and therefore, any real accountability. For instance, 30 Rock creator Tina Fey’s 'apology' last week wasn’t much of a mea culpa — among other things, it refers euphemistically to blackface as 'race-changing makeup.' And while 30 Rock is rightly held up and celebrated as a pioneering, trailblazing sitcom, Fey has never been great at acknowledging the show’s many shortcomings — such as its instances of racism, transphobia and ableism — when they’ve come up over the years. This lack of accountability extends to Fey’s other work. More recently, her Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt featured an episode responding to criticism of its litany of racist stereotypes — especially in its portrayal of Asian and Native American characters — by doubling down on its racism."
• Here's a list of every blackface episode that has been pulled so far

[Heenan Fan]

Ignorant people do ignorant things.

[TMC]

Forget the alleged blackface: The Golden Girls was mired in racism and rape culture throughout its run

As Steven W. Thrasher and others have pointed out, the blackface episode that was pulled last week wasn't really blackface. Yet The Golden Girls has been fair more racially offensive in many other instances, says Thrasher. He adds: "Now that its reckoning has happened in the Black Lives Matter era because of non-blackface blackface, I wonder: Will the show pull episodes where Ruby Dee plays Blanche’s 'Mammy Watkins' (in the 1990 episode actually named 'Wham, Bam, Thank You, Mammy')? Or when Sophia did a Black voice ('Them’s just the appetizers!') while dressed as a mammy in the 1991 series finale? Or Paula Kelly playing the Black, mysterious, and lazy voodoo housekeeper Marguerite? Or when Dorothy — after submitting his essay on how his family immigrated illegally to a contest — prompts her 'Prized Pupil' Mario Lopez to turn himself into immigration so his family can be deported? Or when Chick Vennera played both a Cuban boxer Sophia bought on the street named Kid Pepe ('Kill Gonsales!') and later played Latin TV reporter Enrique Mas? Or when Keone Young played both Dorothy’s Japanese student Mr. Tanaka ('Joe Mama!') in one episode and Dorothy’s Chinese physician Dr. Chang in another (enduring endless racist jokes about Chinese food from Sophia)? From the pilot episode onward, Sophia was always putting down Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Middle Easterners. All four of the girls were racist. Rose once whooped it up in a Native American headdress and pretended to be an exchange student named Kim-Fung Toi in the series’s penultimate episode, using a racist accent." Thrasher also wonders why there hasn't been a reckoning over The Golden Girls' rape-victim-shaming jokes lobbed at Dorothy across many seasons. "The Golden Girls is often celebrated as a feminist sitcom, yet though we see Dorothy angry at Stan for many reasons, that anger is never about the rape," he says. "Herb Edelman has a guest role as Stan 26 times, and the rape is never acknowledged."

[bandonurse]

Again, I say...."Oh, brother".

That was then, this is now. What was considered harmless satire at one point in history often becomes unacceptable to future generations, and is ultimately weeded out of our cultural norms.

What's next? Should we censor most episodes of I Love Lucy because she was so dominated by her husband? Even taking her over his knee a couple of times and spanking her? Yelling at her all the time? Telling her he "just wanted his wife to take care of the house and bring him his slippers when he got home from work"?

As Maya Angelou said: "When you know better, you do better."

[Kasey]

Originally Posted by bandonurse

Again, I say...."Oh, brother".

That was then, this is now. What was considered harmless satire at one point in history often becomes unacceptable to future generations, and is ultimately weeded out of our cultural norms.

What's next? Should we censor most episodes of I Love Lucy because she was so dominated by her husband? Even taking her over his knee a couple of times and spanking her? Yelling at her all the time? Telling her he "just wanted his wife to take care of the house and bring him his slippers when he got home from work"?

As Maya Angelou said: "When you know better, you do better."

Don't be surprised if I Love Lucy gets pulled. After all, Lucy was so racially-insensitive all the time (sarcasm there), mocking Ricky's Cuban accent. If a decades-old program offends you so much, Don't Watch It! PC culture has gotten so ridiculous even ex-liberals like me have swung over to the conservative side.

[BestTVever]

Originally Posted by bandonurse

Oh, brother!

As supportive as I am of the current anti-racism movement, some things should really be taken in context, don't you think?

In fact, not only did Blanche and Rose merely have mud packs on their faces, they showed concern that they might offend their black visitors and explained that they were not trying to look like black people. Quite the opposite of wearing blackface, if you ask me.

But you do you, Hulu.

Exactly. It was not blackface. It was a mud pack and the joke was not about blackface. It was the black women first thought Dorothy was the housekeeper (because she was white and dusting) and then Blanche and Rose walk in and she says, "You must be Michael's parents"
The joke was Dorothy was upset Michael was marrying an older woman. His bride to be parents had no issue with age, it was that he was marrying a skinny white boy. Blanche and Rose were NOT trying to be black and Rose even says "We are not really black, this is mud on our face" Which is yet another joke.
This had nothing to do with blackface or someone trying to look black. The joke was the black women assuming Dorothy was a housekeeper and Rose and Blanche were Michael's parents.

[bandonurse]

Plus, any prejudice in that scene was actually displayed by the bride's mother, who said out loud she didn't want her daughter marrying a white boy.
Even offered to find her a "fine young black man" to marry.

No racism at all was exhibited by the white people during that encounter.

It concerns me that, with all the actual racism in the U.S. today, these ridiculous "false flags" work against the cause of civil rights. They give "Proud Boys" and other white supremacy groups ammunition to claim we're being racist against whites, for whining about such innocent things.

[Sven]

This is not super surprising. They are censoring everything it's ridiculous!!

[Cobain]

The episode is back up on Hulu. They only removed it because BLM was running wild and they didn't want any backlash.